Ireland's prime minister has offered sympathy after an official report held the state responsible for sending many women and girls to the institutions collectively known as Magdalene Laundries, where they were subjected to a harsh regime of intimidation, prayer and unpaid work.

The workhouses, run by Catholic nuns, have been accused of treating inmates who were sometimes put in their care for sexual misdemeanours or simply for illegitimacy, like "slaves" for decades of the 20th century.

Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee reports from Dublin.